He’s right though. There’s nothing in the Steam community forums you can’t get anywhere else. And whenever I try to read comments on a developer post, it’s a big fat waste of time. It’s negative for me and it’s a negative for developers, so good riddance.
I really dislike Steam forums and would prefer they be peeled off / forced to survive elsewhere. This boards tech, Reddit, etc are so much better.
Steam forums are terrible compared to good forums, but for a lot of small or geographically niche games they’re the only real English language discussion on the internet, so they can be pretty valuable.
Steam forums are actually pretty good if the devs dedicate someone to moderate them. I have had mostly ok experience with them. Obviously there are more morons than on qt3, but, say, resetera ain’t much better than steam forums.
But I don’t particularly begrudge Epic for not hosting forums. Although their “reviews are opt-in” stance is interesting. Not sure I am a fan of that.
Giving just Valve your personal info might be safer than signing up for each and every developer’s privately hosted forum. Plus sometimes a developer or even fan site goes defunct and you lose the old discussions.
I also don’t like Reddit and am not sure the signal to noise ratio is better on Reddit than Steam forums.
Lastly, Steam also has Workshop and Guides and other sections that are important. I’m glad I don’t have to use ModDB or GameFAQs any more, and can rely just on Steam. (But I do use Fandom/Wikia a lot.)
Steam reviews are in general bullshit, so I can see why developers would want to opt out of that. There are plenty of other resources on the net if you really want to see what other people (aka morons) think of a game. E.g., if I go to metacritic I look at publications I trust, not those stupid user “reviews”. “I have to pay $20 for Artifact? 1/10 !!!” Fuck that shit.
I heard about the Steam Spy guy the other day. He says they can’t publish sales data, but I wonder if they’ll have all the APIs locked down to prevent a similar estimation system.
Of course they will lock it down. Steam Spy guy is the very definition of a hypocrite.
I just want him to go away so I no longer have to look at that awful avatar of his bearded face.
Not having a forum just means you’ll go to the steam page for a forum. Forums serve an essential function, whether devs like them or not. I’m not going to look up a game’s discord or private forums to ask basic questions and see what people are struggling with. This is so idiotic.
Yeah that’s what I’ve been asking. I’m hopeful there will some competition to Steam but listening to this guy talk, I’m getting increasingly skeptical. It’s like he has a huge blind spot in that none of this matters if customers don’t show up and start buying things. I’ve seen fairly extensive quotes about luring developers and making publishers happy but not a single mention as to why a consumer should want to make the switch. “Sweet, I’m going to start buying things on the Epic store because they don’t have forums or reviews on the product I’m considering!!”.
Ticketing for support makes a lot of sense. It’s easily trackable, you don’t let anything slip through the cracks. Assuming you keep on top of your tickets, anyway.
Global twitter-like newsfeeds make total sense too. Imagine you’re interested in Fallout 76. Before buying, all hyped-up, maybe you subscribe to Fallout76-All. This includes news, links to previews and reviews, lore stuff, updates, and patches. Then once you buy it, you unsubscribe from -All and subscribe only to -News, -Updates, and -Patches for news on upcoming changes and patch notifications.
Then whenever you login to Epic Games, you see a realtime feed of all the stuff you are specifically interested in. Once you’re done with Fallout76, you simply unsubscribe the next time you notice it cluttering up your feed.
Yeah I completely disagree with that. Sure, some reviews are stupid/short/funny/meme/whatever, but not majority. And in general I like people being able to review what they paid for, particularly when I can see how much time they spend using it.
You mean Gabe’s face? I found that avatar amusing :(
I don’t think they have to worry too much about consumers showing up, provided they get the games. Fortnite, Overwatch, Minecraft, Tarkov, etc all show that consumers will follow/find the game they want, assuming the interface for purchase and install is easy. If a popular streamer shows up with an Epic Store exclusive game, it’s gonna sell.
How much does steam charge indie developers? I saw they dropped fees for million dollar titles, but what about the little guys?
They have one of the most popular games on the planet for pushing their client onto tens of millions of PCs.
That’s exactly my point. I’m responding to the point that people won’t “switch” to the Epic Store.
They already have, they just don’t know it. And when the first non-Epic game that’s on there is made popular by an influencer, people will buy it no problem. They won’t mind that it’s not Steam. Nowadays, the young don’t care about that. People our age, who are all fussy, do. But we’re being left behind.
Sure, for exclusive games. I mean they already have Fortnite. But I’m talking about getting publishers to sell their games there as well. If customers can get it on Steam/Origin/Whatever already, I need a reason to buy it there instead. Otherwise I’ll just buy it on Steam where I have all my other games.
I just don’t want more services as I like Steam as a repository. I tolerate uplay barely as an add-on to steam but don’t like it and I’ve never looked at it as a platform. I also tolerate Battle.net but don’t have it starting automatically. I uninstalled Fortnite and emailed them personally to delete my account.
I’m resistant to another platform just on the convenience aspect. I don’t have a single game on Origin and refuse to install it.
But I also suppose we have enough RAM these days and SSDs to reduce startup time that it doesn’t matter so much, so maybe I should just let it go.
You can add non-Steam games to your Steam library. Likely will be able to do that with games you buy on the Epic store.